Guilty of running off to Mexico with Allentown teen Amy Yu, Kevin Esterly sentenced to prison

MIAMI-DADE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECT / THE MORNING CALL

Kevin Esterly, 46, was sentenced to 21/2 to 5 years in state prison on a corruption of minors charge for allegedly fleeing to Mexico with Allentown teen Amy Yu.

Kevin Esterly, 46, was sentenced to 21/2 to 5 years in state prison on a corruption of minors charge for allegedly fleeing to Mexico with Allentown teen Amy Yu. (MIAMI-DADE DEPARTMENT OF CORRECT / THE MORNING CALL)

Daniel Patrick Sheehan, Manuel Gamiz Jr.Of The Morning Call

For a few minutes Monday, as he awaited sentencing in a Lehigh County courtroom, Kevin Esterly stood just a couple of yards from Amy Yu, the Allentown girl he ran off with to Mexico 10 months ago.

She wore a beige cardigan. He wore manacles and a pink jumpsuit.

As a clearly skeptical Judge Maria Dantos listened, Yu read a statement defending the 46-year-old Esterly, saying he had good intentions as a fatherly protector but should have stopped her from going to Mexico instead of accompanying her.

Yu was 16 at the time and said she was determined to escape what she called an abusive home.

“He said if I was going, he would have to go,” said Yu, describing Esterly — a married father of four girls — as the closest thing she had to a father. “I realize Kevin made a horrible mistake and should have physically stopped me.”

The pair flew to Mexico on March 5 — Yu claims she bought both one-way tickets with her own money — and sparked an international manhunt that ended when authorities caught up with them two weeks later in a resort town south of Cancun.

Esterly, formerly of Lowhill Township, struck a deal in which felony charges against him — including one that would have required him to register as a sex offender for 15 years — were dropped. In exchange, he pleaded guilty Nov. 1 to corruption of minors, a first-degree misdemeanor.

Dantos sentenced Esterly to 2½ to 5 years in state prison — the maximum sentence allowed by law for corruption of minors — making it clear that she didn’t believe Yu and Esterly when they claimed their relationship was never physical.

“You asked me to make some unreasonable leaps about your relationship with Amy that I’m not willing to make,” Dantos told Esterly, contending that he had grown obsessed with the girl over the years since his family met her at church.

According to Yu, Esterly was an emotional wreck during their time in Mexico because he missed his family and knew he faced prison if he went home.

“He would cry,” she said. “I’ve never seen a grown man cry like that.”

That claim was undermined by photos of Yu and Esterly laughing and smiling. Some photos showed the teen with an alcoholic beverage in hand.

Esterly’s estranged wife, Stacey, filed for divorce shortly after Esterly and Yu returned from Mexico. She tearfully testified that her husband of 15 years left the family destitute and she is struggling as a single mother working 10 hours a day.

Her daughters — ages 3, 8, 11 and 15 — have been devastated by what their father did.

“My 11-year-old got approached on the school bus by an eighth-grader who asked if she was going to be a child molester like her father,” she said.

Yu’s mother, Miu Luu, speaking through a translator, said her family has been shattered.

“My daughter was very close to me prior to this incident,” she said, adding that her son blames her for having let Amy be around Esterly.

Yu has been living at a home for at-risk teens, which she tried to escape from this summer.

MORNING CALL FILE PHOTO

Amy Yu, in a photo taken in summer 2017, read a statement in court Monday defending 46-year-old Kevin Esterly, saying he had good intentions as a fatherly protector.

Amy Yu, in a photo taken in summer 2017, read a statement in court Monday defending 46-year-old Kevin Esterly, saying he had good intentions as a fatherly protector. (MORNING CALL FILE PHOTO)

Esterly has contended his relationship with Yu was innocent, that of a father trying to protect a headstrong daughter.

At the sentencing, he spoke through sobs at times, saying he sat in his cell every day regretting what he had done and hoping he can somehow make amends and be a good father to his daughters again someday.

“My decisions were selfish and immature and I let my arrogance get the best of me,” he said.

He went on to describe the activities he engaged in as a father — attending parent-teacher conferences and kindergarten graduations, chaperoning dances and coaching soccer.

In response, Dantos noted that Esterly had described himself several times as a father figure despite ample evidence to the contrary.

“Is that a father figure?” she asked, holding up a photo of Esterly cavorting with Yu in Mexico. “It’s not.”

She said “not” five more times as she held up five more photos.

“All of these things you stated you did for your children, all of that was done while you were living a second life,” she said. “What would you think of a man who took one of your own daughters out of the country and hid her?”

Dantos noted that Esterly’s bad decisions haven’t stopped since he went to jail. He has been charged with breaking jail rules five times, once for simple assault and other times for engaging in a bartering system with other inmates, buying and selling commissary items.

“He’s in pink now,” Dantos said, referring to the jumpsuit issued to prisoners guilty of infractions. The prison’s regular jumpsuits are blue.

Esterly’s lawyer, Carol Marciano, said the bartering scheme “is his way of surviving” in prison. “It was wrong, but that’s what he did,” she said.

Esterly and his family had known Yu for about eight years, meeting her through church, and often took her on vacation with them. At one point, Yu was close friends with the oldest of Esterly’s four daughters.

Esterly said Yu was going through a volatile relationship with her mother starting in the summer of 2017, so he would try to include her in activities with his family.

But in February, the girl's mother discovered Esterly was signing her daughter out of her Northampton County charter school, and Luu became upset because he did not have authority or permission to do that.

School officials encouraged her to contact police and they discovered he had done it 10 times between November and February, posing as her stepfather. A week later, Esterly and his estranged wife went to Luu's home in Allentown, where they created a disturbance and were warned by police not to return.

Esterly and Yu then fled to Mexico.

Acting on a tip from a taxi driver, Mexican and U.S. authorities found them at an apartment in Puerto Morelos. When they were detained, Esterly and Yu were using fake names. She called herself Jamie Cruz and he Calvin Cruz.

Esterly told authorities he went with Yu to protect her and Yu emphatically denied any sexual relationship with him.

She said so again Monday, calling the idea of intimacy with Esterly “more than gross.”